FF3 FANTASTIC 4: Comes the Fallen One
by Dan Bivens
Summary: While in the wake of the events of EARTHBOUND, the FF and the Silver Surfer are soon confronted by the Fallen One, the first herald of Galactus! Could he be TOO powerful to defeat?
1. Chapter 1

**COMES THE FALLEN ONE**

By: Dan Bivens

Chapter 1

"Hey, what's the idea?" shouted the gravelly voiced Ben "The Thing" Grimm after reacting to an elaborately delivered "hotfoot" via the flamed-on appendage of none-other-than Johnny "The Human Torch" Storm, still laughing almost nonstop at his unique caper. "I oughta…!"

No sooner had The Thing lumbered along in the general direction of a still-laughing Human Torch, than the self-described hotshot fully flamed-on in order to allow his formerly Human form to become a mentally-controlled burst of self-generating plasma flame that, almost instantly, allowed the young-in-years superhero to hover above the living room's carpeted, flame-retardant naturally, floor.

"You oughta," the blazing showoff said with a smirk, "be thankful it was those size thirties I flame-jetted instead of that wide load ass of yours, Rocky. Heheheh, hahaha!"

"Why you dime-store super-idiot, when I get my mitts on ya, I'll…!" snarled the rock-like, super-strong, nigh-invulnerable individual making up fully one-fourth of the often unfathomable Fantastic Four, even as the fully flamed-on Human Torch swiftly yet gracefully flew around and away from the 600-plus pound seeming monstrosity. "Hey! Stay still so's I can smash ya!"

"Hey, maybe you'd be so stupid as to wait for an ass-whoopin'," The Human Torch said while still swiftly streaking around and away from the Thing in the fully flameproof multi-levels at the top of the towering Baxter Building, "but not me! If you can catch me, rocks-for-brains, then I deserve to get swatted away like a big bug! 'Course, this 'bug' knows how to sting!"

As if to promptly punctuate his point, The Human Torch easily tossed small balls of plasma-flame hurtling toward The Thing in order to impact various areas about his tremendous rock-like torso.

"Ouch! Ow! Hey! Cut it out! Ouch!" bellowed the behemoth of human marble, still attempting to catch the ever-elusive via self-generated plasma flame Human Torch. "Wait'll I get hold'a ya, matchstick! I'll snuff ya like a freakin' birthday cake candle!"

"So says the guy so slow he couldn't catch a cold!" belly-laughed The Human Torch as he continued to swiftly circle and swoop while hurling still more small balls of flame at the immensity that was The Thing.

Because he was so hell-bent on Thing-handling the Flaming One, Ben had inadvertently trashed most of the reinforced furniture making up the sizeable nicely decorated interior of only one of several such floors specifically used by The Fantastic Four.

Such was when Sue "Invisible Woman" Richards happened to step in.

"What are you two doing?" she shouted loudly and angrily, even as The Invisible Woman issued an invisible force field, two to be more precise, to encircle and envelope both her fully flaming, and flying, younger brother as well as the thundering Thing. "Now stop or I swear I'll tighten those fields until you both find out what its like to be shrink-wrapped!"

Held utterly still, no matter now The Thing struggled with his unsurpassed super-strength or how hotly burned the plasma-flame engulfing the still hovering Human Torch, both at last surrendered to the situation as The Invisible Woman slowly released identical invisible fields of force, so psychically controlled by the beauteous blonde, before looking about at the needless debris of destruction in a used-by-all living room.

"Just look at this place! Ben…Johnny…you should be ashamed of yourselves!" snappishly said The Invisible Woman as she promptly propped tightly clenched fists upon sensuously shaped hips and angrily added, "Well, I'm not going to clear this living room of this rubble. But you two will! Or else I'll have Reed whip up something designed to totally neutralize the two of you for the rest of the week! Got me?"

Reacting exactly like little children caught misbehaving by their "mother", The Thing lightly kicked a clump of smashed furniture with a stony toe, while the fully flamed-off Human Torch held his head down in an expression of sophomoric shame, even as both muttered simultaneously, "Yeah, we're sorry, Sue."

Heaving a heavy-but-short sigh of exaggerated exasperation, The Invisible Woman spun on her heels while grumbling, "Guess I've got to tell Reed he needs to custom order more reinforced furniture. Makes me wish there were some super-villains to battle."

At that exact instant, some seven billion light-years distant in the frozen airlessness of space…

"I am free!" super-shouted, even through the surrounding depths of an impeccable vacuum, a strange creature of clearly humanoid origins, but composed of cosmic power granted, unknown eons earlier, by Galactus himself, as well as absolutely undeniable dark energy.

Streaking at speeds approaching that of the speed-of-light, from some long-lost location at the very edge of the known universe, he continued. "I had been bound within the power prison known as Kyln, those ten billion year old spheres constructed of diametric compositions of matter-and-antimatter, made especially for such as I, for longer than I can recall. Almost as long as my immortal existence untold billions of years before thanks to the purple-clad Planet-Eater! An existence so distant in time and space, as well as cosmic memory, that I can no longer conceive of a single natural name…save that which great Galactus granted unto me at my cosmic creation as his first space-spanning herald: The Fallen One!"

Soon sensing evidence of the peerless power cosmic, even across countless galactic aggregations of a wide variety of stars and solar systems, the Fallen One allowed his incomparable power, both cosmic as well as what he derived from dark energy, to send him streaking through the vast cosmos via rapidly opening space-time tunnels in exactly the same fashion as all former heralds to eternal Galactus.

Streaking, in point of fact, straight toward an insignificantly tiny spatial point on the opposite side of the seemingly ceaseless cosmos.

"Earth!"

END OF CHAPTER 1


	2. Chapter 2

**COMES THE FALLEN ONE**

By: Dan Bivens

Chapter 2

"How beautiful this backward world truly is," lamented the Silver Surfer as he soared atop his board, so brightly gleaming under a single sun, across the face of our own blue-green globe. Filled, impossibly it seemed, with a natural splendor the likes of which the Surfer had not known since he, as Norrin Radd, existed on long-lost Zenn-La, deep in the Deneb system of this self-same spiral galaxy. "Yet how maligned its magnificence by the self-same Humans I, myself, along with the Fantastic Four and four former heralds of Galactus answering my psychic call, had salvaged against Galactus' resurgent need to feed upon Earth's peerless life-energies. As I streak across its skies, some sorely polluted and others still pristine, at speeds from far below that of sound to some five times same, I go from the viewing of indescribably beautiful wildernesses with myriad varieties of both fauna and flora in exceptionally immense numbers to…"

In an instant, the Silver Surfer, soaring so majestically from heights as impressively lofty as fifty thousand feet to those as humbly low as a couple of hundred, quickly covered the expanse of a strangled city to that of the verdantly dominated Human-free forests and entangled jungles. From sections scarred by society to those untouched by time.

"Of all the countless planets I have visited while in servitude to great Galactus," continued the Surfer as his silvery skin glinted as brightly as the silvery space-time traveling board upon which he stood so stately. The wind whistling past his august Self as, more than occasionally, sonic booms of multi-Mach speeds exploded in his sweeping wake. "Of all the endless solar systems in the literal millions of galaxies I have streaked through at both near-light, in normal space, velocities to piercing straight through the fabric of space-time via advanced quantum tunneling techniques incorporated so cosmically into the board co-created at the same moment as he who was once known as Norrin Radd was transformed into the Silver Surfer…only Earth is at once so singularly lovely and so unspeakably base."

Having, in the short seconds such considerations within his super-consciousness took to pass so swiftly from one forethought to the next, covered over a thousand miles on the opposite side of the blue-green planet, the Silver Surfer once again considered the completely incongruous Truth that, for some as yet utterly unknown reason, readily recognized by the more than 13-billion year old Galactus, third force of the universe, Earth held a uniquely indomitable life-energy than virtually every other world so lustfully consumed by the Eternal Eater of Planets.

Curious. Most curious.

Just as the fact that there existed in a city known as New York not only a great gathering of such cosmically-sought, by Galactus, energies, but super-beings so altered by more simplistic cosmic forces, into the collectively called…the Fantastic Four.

Those to whom he had altered his universal viewpoint and realigned his allegiance against he who had bequeathed unto the Silver Surfer the self-same power cosmic as had been done for those four who'd also fallen from grace over the untold millennia of cosmological time.

Four who not only perceived the psionic transmission sent forth through sub-spatial subsistence of such a vast cosmos and, much more importantly, tunnel-traveled straight to this small planet existing near the edge of a simplistically basic spiral galaxy in order to enjoin their power cosmic in order to force a former master to turn his titanic back on a singularly suffused-with-life energies Earth. Again.

Perhaps the Silver Surfer would stay for a time. A dozen decades, maybe. Several centuries, possibly. Then again, the Surfer might streak straightaway into endless space and once again enjoy the plenitude of wonders this immense cosmos offered such as he.

One thing was absolute certitude: so long as the Surfer did stay, he would always look out for these hapless Humans and their uniquely life-energy permeated planet. And he would also remain fast friends with…

The Fantastic Four were definitely not the type to expend super-powers dealing with the likes of common criminals or even basic terrorist types. Such simply did not seem to present such as they with the properly elevated level of activity for cosmic ray-granted capabilities contained in the persons referred to as: Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, and The Thing.

They separately and collectively believed their singular existence centered around such as a Dr. Doom, in regards to earthly threats, or a Galactus in as much as pertained to unearthly threats.

As such, save for Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards, resident genius whose IQ easily exceeded Einstein's and who was constantly ensconced in super-scientific experiments or investigations, the likes of Susan "The Invisible Woman" Richards, Johnny "The Human Torch" Storm, and Ben "The Thing" Grimm were all left to fill their days in much the same manner as most Americans.

Such as The Invisible Woman, her special Fantastic Four attire hidden beneath designer-styled clothing, either shopping or spending her days doing interviews with everyone from Larry King to Ryan Seacrest.

Such as The Human Torch mostly utilized self-generated plasma flame to streak through the skies of New York and more at the speed of a missile as well as engaging himself, once he was flamed-off of course, with a variety of extreme sports and, naturally, enjoying the cozy comfort offered by beautiful ladies.

The Thing, when not spending precious romantic time with a certain Alicia Masters, blind sculptress extraordinaire, loved to laze around the living room or even his own private quarters scarffing down hundreds of pounds of buttery popcorn and other fast food concoctions while watching Action presentations via DVDs or satellite TV.

That was except for the occasional super-powered spats, such as the one that had earlier occurred and caused Mr. Fantastic to send out for more reinforced furniture to replace the pieces so completely obliterated by The Thing while being haplessly harassed by The Human Torch.

Now, suddenly, detected by intricate computers constantly scanning surrounding space, both to offer NASA an ever greater degree of data needed to plan space shuttle missions as well as creating a proverbial "protective web" about the Earth-Moon section of the Sol system used, essentially, as an early-alert procedure for potential super-cosmic dangers aimed directly at a world's race of Humans…

"Oh, God," Mr. Fantastic uttered under his breath even as detector systems tracked and authenticated some kind of cosmic menace streaking straight for planet Earth.

Even as Mr. Fantastic swiftly super-stretched one arm in order to hammer an inflated fist against a special Red Alert control connected to all levels of the Fantastic Four areas atop the Baxter Building, while also simultaneously alerting the Pentagon and the White House…

That which he'd detected, now traveling at less than half the speed-of-light constant within normal space, was the Fallen One, dark matter incarnate and possessor of the same power cosmic as was the Silver Surfer.

Ahhhhhh, thought a suddenly smirking humanoid shape almost as black, down to his bizarre atomic structure, as the dark matter/energy over which such as he had an absolute link while still streaking straight for the blue-green globe. Now I understand why the great Galactus, along with five ex-heralds who came along many eons after me, saw reason to so concentrate their space-spanning consciousnesses upon what would seem, on the physical surface, to be merely an ordinary life-sustaining planet. Just as I sense he who was the second selected by the Devourer of Worlds to be his herald long after I fell from grace. The Silver Surfer!

In the seconds of real time it would take the Fallen One to eventually enter the outermost atmosphere of Earth, not only the Fantastic Four, but, by way of his own celestially attuned senses, the board-riding Surfer would rapidly prepare for perhaps the greatest battle short of a third cosmic melee with mighty Galactus.

END OF CHAPTER 2


	3. Chapter 3

**COMES THE FALLEN ONE**

By: Dan Bivens

Chapter 3/Conclusion

Shooting skyward at multi-Mach speeds soared the uniquely created Fantasti-Car whose less than aerodynamic design was precisely compensated for by a prototype anti-gravity field firmly encircling the sectional vessel holding the likes of Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, and The Thing.

All four, as they had already done more than once before, prepared to promptly engage, head-on if necessary, the cosmic menace earlier detected by the devices developed and operated by the super-genius mind of Mr. Fantastic.

Speaking through scrambled headsets that instantly compensated for the roar of rear thruster engines as well as when the pulse-pounding moment came to completely separate the sectional ship…

"Tell me agin what ya saw on yer little do-hickey, Stretcho?" said the gravelly voice of The Thing via his extra-special, basically in size, headset with a hint of unconvinced cajolery as he rode in the rear-most section of the singularly unique Fantasti-Car.

"I've already told you everything, Ben," impatiently remarked Mr. Fantastic, in the front-most section of the impossibly speeding ship. "My sensors essentially detected something man-sized streaking at one-half the speed-of-light on a vectored course straight for Earth, in general, and New York, in particular, which, again via the same scientifically-advanced sensor sweeps essentially casting a spheroid 'web' about our Earth-Moon orbital area up to a distance of…"

"Forget I asked, Brain-boy!" playfully pouted The Thing. "Yer givin' me a headache!"

"Bottom lining it, Glorious Leader," chimed in The Human Torch half-sarcastically/half-seriously, "you picked up a major cosmic bad guy about to make a mess of good ol' planet Earth starting with the City That Never Sleeps, that about right, brother-in-law?"

"As near 'right' as you can get, Johnny," groaned the genius with super-stretching abilities imparted to him so many years earlier during a once-in-an-eon cosmic event while, in essence, entrapped upon Victor Von Doom's improperly protected V-shaped space-station.

"Are you certain," asked The Invisible Woman, blessed spouse of Mr. Fantastic, uniformly important member of the Fantastic Four, "that this 'cosmic menace' is heading for New York, Reed?"

"That's where the trajectory vectors implicitly indicated, Sue," said Mr. Fantastic just as the tied-into-Baxter Building supercomputer-controlled tracking equipment incorporated into the Fantasti-Car leapt into luminous life. "As a matter of fact: here he comes now!"

Even as the Fantasti-Car swiftly separated into four small-scale versions of the vaster gravity-defying vehicle, mostly to allow individual Fantastic Four persons to surround said hazard and, then, utilize person-specific super-powers against him…

"So," snarled the ebony, down to the smallest molecule, Fallen One while still streaking straight down toward New York proper at a velocity slightly slower than Mach One, "these humanoids attempting to attack me appear to be permeated with some lesser example of cosmic forces no doubt granting their group certain specific super-abilities. They shall learn that when one possessed not only the power cosmic, but true dark energy, defeat does not enter the equation."

From the extended-in-flight hands of he who had been dubbed by Galactus, countless eons earlier, as the Fallen One…

"Look out!" shouted Mr. Fantastic via his headset, just as the cosmically-increased pure dark energy almost encompassed the still separated sections of the Fantasti-Car, each part occupied by super-Humans hell-bent on defending not only New York but the whole of humanity.

Fortunately, extensive simulator training in unison with, over time, concrete combat, including the most recent incident involving Galactus and the Silver Surfer, allowed all to controllably roll away from the cosmic-plus blast of obsidian force.

Unfortunately…

"Reed," The Invisible Woman shouted via her headset as her handsome husband and peerless super-partner reacted, "whatever that energy is its heading straight for Manhattan! If it hits…!"

Before the beautiful lady in her form-fitting Fantastic Four super-suit, whom was currently controlling, as trained, the separated section of the Fantasti-Car occupied by her, could complete that panicked point of fearful realization…

The supremely powerful cosmic energies unique to the Silver Surfer, just then slowing from a speed exceeding sound five times over to one just under three hundred miles-per-hour, having psychically sensed the inevitable arrival of the Fallen One, served to save Manhattan from a fate as devastatingly destructive as any New York had ever encountered. Even from the devilish Dr. Doom…or great Galactus.

"Silver Surfer!" said The Human Torch even as he activated the auto-pilot program of his separated section of the Fantasti-Car and fully flamed-on in order to swiftly streak upward and away like a human-sized missile.

"The Surfer!" quietly stated The Invisible Woman while piloting her Fantasti-Car section in a roundabout direction toward the seemingly shocked-into-hovering Fallen One.

Whose instantly detecting senses, in regards to any possessor of the power cosmic, had him angrily growling, "The Silver Surfer!"

By the time, scant seconds to be exact, the board-riding individual of silvery material streaked straight toward this newest enemy of his adopted planet as well as his four super-powered compatriots…

…the Fallen One unleashed laser-like eye-blasts, still a curious combination of cosmic and dark energy, that struck the chest of the rapidly approaching-by-board Silver Surfer with such concussive force that not only an obvious convulsion of incomparable agony quickly encompassed this silvery space-spanning cosmic creation, by the purple-gloved hand of Galactus…

"He's falling!" exclaimed a compassionate Invisible Woman while psychically extending her incredible invisible force field to halt the Surfer's fall, from at least two thousand feet above the buildings dominating downtown Manhattan.

Even as Mr. Fantastic shouted instructions via his headset transmission-synched with those currently worn by The Thing, rock-skinned super-strong/nigh-invulnerable, as well as loveable, member of the Four, whose response was…

"Looks like it's clobberin' time agin!"

…as well as the fully flamed-on, via self-generated plasma, Human Torch streaking in swiftly looping spirals so incredibly high over the majestic entirety of their city, while also preparing to promptly toss both flame-balls as well as nova-level blasts at the still hovering dark matter/energy enemy threatening everything he loved. And everyone.

"Time to pretend you're a chicken and I'm 'Colonel Sanders'! Dark meat anyone?"

Finally, his super-elasticity about to be, yet again, pressed past intensely tortuous limitations, Mr. Fantastic, his section of the Fantasti-Car, also on auto-pilot program, first hurled himself straight toward the Fallen One in a tautly balled shape such as he had recently learned to master. One intended to distract the Fallen One so that his three teammates, as well as the Silver Surfer should the scintillatingly shining humanoid essentially survive that concentrated-in-delivery dark-energy eye blast, could all attack this newest nemesis from multiple points.

"Come on, Surfer," said a seriously straining Invisible Woman as sweat glistened on her beauteous countenance as she continued extending her invisible force field about an unconscious cosmically-powered personage even as her section of the Fantasti-Car hover-circled around said shimmering humanoid.

Finally, just as all seemed lost, the Silver Surfer's cosmically-infused form, as well as cosmically-enhanced consciousness, returned so that the second the strained-to-near unconsciousness Invisible Woman was forced to cease her psionically-transmitted force field, the Surfer's silvery board again answered a silent signal from its majestic master and, microseconds later, allowed the wielder of the power cosmic to soar, in a more roundabout route, toward the Fallen One who, at that self-same moment, was being, incredibly, kept off-balance by the well-executed attacks by three of the Fantastic Four.

Mr. Fantastic's elusively confusing super-elasticity; The Human Torch's super-intense plasma-flame assaults; and, last but never ever least, The Thing tossing super-powerful punches guaranteed to rattle anything no matter how cosmic. Save, of course, for such as the Planet Eater, Galactus.

However, the Fallen One, locked away at the edge of the known universe for billions of years, was anything but unable to blast away with planet-pulverizing dark energy-mixed-with-power cosmic force beyond force.

Only one thing immediately stopped stray black blasts from the Fallen One from instantly obliterating all of Manhattan two thousand feet below the battle: the Invisible Woman's unstoppable ability to psychically extend her invisible force fields took the brunt of such unbridled dark-energy emissions.

Even as the revitalized Silver Surfer's singularly all-powerful power cosmic kicked in and took over.

As the Fallen One now turned his total attention to the board-riding ex-herald, as brightly resplendent as he was ominously obsidian, the Fallen One super-shouted, causing glass windows down below to both crack or break, "Silver Surfer! It was you who not only took my place, long after my humiliating fall from grace in the cosmic all-seeing eyes of Galactus, as well as during my inevitable incarceration for billions of years in the far-flung Kyln prison orbs! It was even you who helped to bring together four other ex-heralds to recently defeat a depleted-in-energy Planet Eater from consuming this lowly world! Therefore…it is you that must surely be destroyed!"

"Strike as you must, Fallen One!" shouted the Surfer from atop his glittering board. "But the Silver Surfer shall not fall before the likes of you! Not while the power cosmic is still mine to claim and control!"

Having returned to their respective self-piloting sections of the Fantasti-Car, which had then been quickly reconnected into its significantly larger framework to swoop widely about the battle area high over Manhattan, with even The Human Torch resettling his flamed-off Self into his section, the Fantastic Four watched what took place in the daytime sky.

Watched and hoped that it would indeed be the Silver Surfer who would wind up virtuously victorious. For if such a singular cosmic outcome favored the Fallen One…

"What the hell's happenin', Stretcho?" said The Thing to their undeniable leader via his oversized headset. "I can't see nothin' 'cause of all that blasted energy being tossed about up there!"

"I honestly don't know, Ben," wearily breathed Mr. Fantastic into his own normal-sized headset. "Even my onboard scanning devices can't penetrate that ultra-cosmic expulsion of power both silvery and black."

"Want me to try and fly close enough to see, Reed?" eagerly suggested the flamed-off self-described extreme sports participant and resident daredevil when it came to combat.

Even such super-cosmic combat.

"No, Johnny!" swiftly warned Mr. Fantastic even as the expulsion of the power cosmic and indescribable dark-energy nearly blinded them all. "There's nothing we can do but wait…and pray."

Although one as incredibly intelligent as Mr. Fantastic seemed incapable of relying on prayer, when faced with such staggering cosmic dynamism, even such as he was as a simplistic child.

Then, after what seemed, not only to the Fantastic Four flying about above, but the tens of thousands standing so awestruck far below, to be an unending eternity…

"Enough!"

That super-shout issued forth from the Silver Surfer even as the gleaming man on the high-flying surfboard unleashed almost all of his self-contained cosmic force in one last blast that sent a stunned-into-near-death unconsciousness Fallen One hurtling at near-light velocity straight up and out of Earth's enveloping atmosphere.

Only to continue hurtling through the frozen reaches of airless space until, eventually, the still unconscious, possibly comatose, Fallen One would wind up a dozen galactic clusters further from Earth.

And if the Fallen One should ever regain his senses, such cosmically extensive injury would pragmatically guarantee he'd never again regain any precise recollection of either Earth or the Silver Surfer.

Who, at that self-same instant, collapsed atop his glistening-in-sunlight board as terrifyingly still as someone dangerously close to physical extinction.

"Reed, what can we do?" asked a shocked, compassionate Sue "The Invisible Woman" Richards even as the silvery board with its limp, lustrously gleaming master still supine atop it, streaked off at multi-Mach speeds to almost instantly disappear past the distant horizon.

"There's nothing we can do for someone like the Surfer, Sue," heavily heaved Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards even as he used the high-tech controls at his touch to send the reassembled Fantasti-Car back in the general direction of the Fantastic Four floors atop the Baxter Building. "No Human could hope to help a creature as cosmic as he. All we can do is head home. Each of us no doubt needs a day or two of holistic healing after what we've experienced this day."

Ben "The Thing" Grimm considered saying something snappy in reply, but, truth be told, he was just too sore. Sleep and supper, not necessarily in that order, was all his weary rock-encrusted mind could manage.

Until the moment came again for his self-styled "clobberin' time" techniques…

END


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